Darwin's Black Box - Michael J. Behe and Intelligent Design

When I started reading these books, I pretty much didn't know anything about the topic. I don't think I had even heard of random mutations before this. I did a lot of research of my own later, outside the books, because I became really fascinated with it, so I studied DNA and proteins and ribosomes and so on, but none of that is necessary in order to get the point. I mostly did that because I really wanted to be able to explain it to others. All the books I've read so far have been easy to understand

Read what you said earlier and did not get a chance to reply. As such, heck, its been an education reading along as you brought an additional light on the subject that could be shared far and wide.

Good one!
 
The two bearded guys especially got into circular reasoning and almost admitted that they wanted to stick to materialism on the basis of faith despite the counter-arguments they encountered. Something like "but I have more to say about it" or "we can talk about it later" (paraphrazing) is to save face, which shows how ego-driven these discussions can become sometimes.
Kastrup has a book called "why materialism is baloney" after all. That's more than enough to "trigger" some people.

Yes, of which prof Coleman seemed especially ridged, osit - somewhat agitated with the ideas of Kastrup in the face of dearly held positions that they (he) harbor. As Joe said, these were abstract positions being argued (most difficult with materialist minded).

Kastrup, with his PhD background in computer engineering and now accepted in philosophy, is a very interesting position. His supervisor at the end mentions (fist that it is odd he being a supervisor at all given the circumstances), with some words and tones of marvel at how Kastrup's ultimate acceptance happened. So, the supervisor seemed very pleased (he had skin in the game) and was obviously much more open to Kastrup's ideas than the more ridged even if he did not agree on all points.
 
Bernardo Kastrup's writings have been cited previously in this thread. Regardless of whether one agrees or not with his cosmic mind model, he at least invalidates the basic premises of the materialist/physicalist worldview in an elegant way. He also does it in an academic setting. The video is Kastrup's Ph.D. defense this year:

Thanks for posting, this was a fascinating discussion! I also like how the panel members were open minded and positive in their questions and responses.
 
I enjoyed that, and I find his thesis pretty compelling and pretty close to our own general viewpoint on the nature of the universe. It's kind of funny to see the panel and Kastrup himself argue back and forth about such abstract topics as if a non-abstract answer would be forthcoming, and most of the panel apparently invested in finding a materialistic answer to the question of 'what is the nature of the immaterial universe'. Then again, that's the 'hard question' of human philosophy for ya.

It was very interesting, though I'd like to listen to it again, to really follow the questions and Kastrup's reasoning as he answered them. You could just feel the panel's brain gears grinding, as he parried their questions with such well thought out answers. I'll bet they don't often get such a spirited defense of a subject that some don't think are worth inquiring into.

There's a book that was recently discussed on Mind Matters, about the small-p psi experiences of everyday objects appearing and disappearing without any rational explanation.


The author of the book being discussed, JOTT (just one of those things), extrapolates from these everyday, but mysterious events, a theory of the nature of reality that is remarkably close to Kastrup's proposition of individual consciousnesses as being spit off alters of a larger one and contained within it. She even goes so far as to call it Cosmic Mind! Not only that, she makes the proposal for several levels of consciousness within the all encompassing Cosmic Mind. It's a light-hearted read, but the last two chapters are pretty surprising. I really recommend it.
 
I agree. The only thing I really got out of Axe's book was that wild inspiration about photosynthesis. It really is freaking amazing to be able to convert light into matter/energy.

Someone can give me the relevant pages my copy of "Undeniable" hibernates in a distant box.
 
(feel free to move it to a better thread if you know one)
Complex Waves from Cortical Organoids Model Early Human Brain Development:
 
For those interested in reading about genetics, I've posted about a book I'm reading about populations that immigrated to the US. Reading this book led to a little search for what other readers thought of it and that led me to some articles about Behavioral Genetics. These latter articles appear to be written by a guy who has a totally materialistic perspective, but still the facts elicited by the studies he cites are really interesting and give us a good idea of what genetics are available to "marry" with a soul.

 
In looking for some enlightening ideas on photosynthesis, i crossed the way of this article of the mathematician Granville Sewell (" Clearly something extremely improbable has happened here on our planet, with the origin and development of life, and especially with the development of human consciousness and creativity.") on "Evolution News":
Once Again: Who Designed the Designer?
With inside two videos, one of them of Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig biologist/geneticist ("Normally the better your arguments are, the more people open their minds to your theory, but with ID, the better your argu - ments are, the more they close their minds, and the angrier they become. This is science upside down.")

The video interview:

And the article.
 
I have just finished reading Shattering the Myths of Darwinism by Richard Milton.

This has become one of my favourite evolution-related books, together with the ones by Behe and Signature in the Cell by Meyer.

It's very accessible, doesn't go into any biological details like DNA and proteins, and focuses more on the overall picture and the various aspects of Darwinism that don't add up. It has a lot in common with the already-mentioned The Bone Peddlers. There's much about fossils and what they do and don't show, about the inaccuracy of pretty much all dating methods scientists use, and about a lot of things that have been established as "true" with hardly any evidence to support them.

What's also cool is that the author makes it clear that he's not religious in any way, so a nice change from all the books where the last chapter suddenly smuggles Jesus in.

Highly recommended to anyone who's still only beginning to get into this topic and isn't ready for complicated explanations about nucleotides and such. (Still very valuable for anyone who's already read a dozen books on the topic.)
 
I came across this article: 9 Scientific Facts Prove the "Theory of Evolution" is False

The guy who posted it notes:
The above is an excerpt of a larger article promoting creationism (the religious belief that life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being), but without bringing any kind of evidence to support it.

The author brings solid scientific arguments to disprove the "Theory of Evolution" as it is today, but disproving it does not implicitly prove the biblical "Creation Story" is correct.

There's no creationism in the posted article, just the science, and it's a pretty good summary.

Some highlights:
If evolution were true, all plants, animals, and insects would be in a continual state of change. ... All life forms would be a continual blend of characteristics without a clear definition among the species. Everything would be changing, and every animal, insect, and plant would be different.

The Coelacanth fish was touted to be a transitional form with half-formed legs and primitive lungs, ready to transition onto land. This myth was exploded in December, 1938 when a live Coelacanth was caught in a fisherman's net off the eastern coast of South Africa. It is now known that the natives of the Comoro Islands had been catching and eating the fish for years.
It did not have half-formed legs or primitive lungs. It was simply a regular fish that people thought was extinct. Evolutionist claimed the 350 million-year-old Coelacanth evolved into animals with legs, feet, and lungs.
This not the case. We now see that the fish recently caught is exactly like the 350 million-year-old fossil. It did not evolve at all.

Let us say we have 100,000 coexisting individuals in a species such as a horse. Only a few of these individuals will begin new branches that will eventually become a new species such as a Zebra.
The other 99,999 individuals may each begin a neutral or inferior branch that may continue for millions of years but will eventually stop, because the last individual on the branch fails to produce an offspring.
The odds that the branch will stop producing offspring is increased when the minute evolutionary changes are inferior. The theory of survival of the fittest or natural selection also works in reverse to produce death to the branch where the changes are inferior. The branch stops. This part of the tree is dead.
We see in Scientific Fact No. 2 above that the missing intermediary individuals in the branch of the evolutionary tree present a serious problem for the Theory of Evolution. One superior individual of the 100,000 is missing, but now we have an even more serious defect in the theory. Where are the 99,999 inferior branches? How could 99,999 branches go missing?

Curiously enough, there's also a video interview with Richard Milton (mentioned in my previous post above) at the end of the article.

Also there's a video where somebody asks college students about what evidence for Evolution they can actually show. They all fail to produce any, of course, although they all start by saying they totally believe in evolution. Fun video, interesting article.
 
I came across this article: 9 Scientific Facts Prove the "Theory of Evolution" is False

The guy who posted it notes:
The above is an excerpt of a larger article promoting creationism (the religious belief that life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being), but without bringing any kind of evidence to support it.

The author brings solid scientific arguments to disprove the "Theory of Evolution" as it is today, but disproving it does not implicitly prove the biblical "Creation Story" is correct.

There's no creationism in the posted article, just the science, and it's a pretty good summary.

This just highlights the tactic employed by the whole gang of Left/Libs/Dems/Neo-Darwinists/Postmodernists/Whatever: They LIE.

Either they do not read, or do not read with comprehension, or just out-and-out make stuff up - YCYOR so to say - and they are off and running.

The awful thing is: it looks like a lot of them actually believe their own lies.
 
@luc

Congratulations on your new article! Excellent stuff. It's all pretty simple and obvious from where I'm standing, but apparently most people are standing somewhere else, and these things should probably be repeated quite often, so this is really helpful.

It pretty much all revolves around "just think for yourself, goddamn it!", but for some reason most people never learn to do that. Constant reminders are therefore required, so thanks for this one, for everyone's sake.

For those who may have missed it:
 
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